Woman ‘woke to find taxi driver raping her’, court told

A second young woman has told the Central Criminal Court how she woke up on her way home from a night out to find a taxi driver raping her.

The woman, who was 20 at the time, told the court that she fell asleep in a taxi on her way home from a night out in Dublin city centre in the early hours of 9 August 2022 and woke up to find the driver on top of her, having sex with her.

She broke down in tears in the witness box after describing what happened to her.

The driver, who is 50 and from Dublin, is accused of raping two young women on two separate nights in summer 2022. He has pleaded not guilty.

The first young woman, who is also now 21, told the court last week that she was raped by the accused man in the back of his taxi in the early hours of 26 June 2022.

She told the court she had been out with work colleagues but became separated from them.

She described herself as “very drunk” after drinking more alcohol than she would be used to.

The second young woman said she had been going on a night out with friends and the plan was to stay in her friend’s house.

They spent the early evening getting ready and drinking before travelling into the city centre where they visited a number of pubs and a nightclub and drank some more, including a number of shots of sambuca.

She said they left the nightclub at around 2.30am. However, she became separated from her friends when she went to get chips and was then not allowed into the restaurant where the rest of the group had gone.

She decided she would just go home. She said she was tired and quite drunk by this stage.

The woman told prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small she could not remember if she had hailed down a taxi or whether it had just stopped for her.

She got into the back of the cab, told the taxi driver she wanted to go home, told him where she lived and then fell asleep.

There was no conversation before she fell asleep, she said.

The next thing she remembered, she said, was waking up with the taxi driver on top of her.

She said she came to the realisation that he was having sex with her and she said she turned her head away because she did not want him to kiss her.

She said she was sore and in shock. She did not know how to fight back because she could not believe what was happening.

When the man finished she said he told her to fix herself up and he got into the front of the taxi. She said she fell back asleep again.

The young woman described again being in shock and then broke down in the witness box.

After a short break, the woman continued her evidence and told the court the man drove her back to her house and charged her for the fare.

Her phone was dead, she said, and she had to bang on the door of her home and her parents eventually let her in.

She said she “stupidly” got back in the car to charge her phone so she could pay the driver as she said she did not know what he could do next if she did not pay.

But she said her phone would not charge and one of her parents came out and gave the driver cash.

The driver drove away and she said she broke down crying to her parents and told them what happened.

She told Ms Small she did not consent to the man having sex with her.

Under cross-examination from defence counsel, Lorcan Staines she denied she had kissed the man and that he had kissed her when they reached her hometown.

Mr Staines said it was the driver’s case that he asked the young woman if she wanted him to come into the back seat of the car and that she had said yes.

The young woman told the court “that didn’t happen at all”.

She said she was falling in and out of consciousness at the time.

Asked about telling a garda and a nurse at the sexual assault treatment unit at the time that she remembered the man getting out of the front and getting into the back of the car, she said she had no memory of that and remembered only waking up and turning her head away from him “not wanting it to happen”.

She said she did not give any consent and did not instigate anything.

The court heard the man told gardaí they had consensual sex, that they were both smiling and “having a good time”.

He denies the allegations of rape in both cases and claims the sexual interactions with both young women were consensual.